Practicing A Simple Spirituality

My definition of spirituality is a simple one; try to practice love, kindness, understanding, and tolerance toward others and ourselves. However, as you may already know, this isn’t always easy to do. People can irritate us and we don’t always react well to them. Or worse, someone makes us really angry and we blow up at them, without any thought of being spiritual, and then later we beat ourselves up for the way we acted.

This is understandable in some circumstances, of course, after all the key word here is practice. But even with practice I still get angry with people at times, and I don’t always behave in a spiritual manner. This is especially true when I’m tired, or when things aren’t going my way on some days. Even on those days though, I still don’t blow up at anyone—it’s much easier to practice love, kindness, understanding, and tolerance toward others now.

Actually, I got better at practicing this simple spirituality toward myself first, which helped to make it easier. But in reality, I know I can’t love everyone or always understand their behaviors. All I can really do is to try my best to be kind, or at least tolerant, and not respond in a nasty way.

Now this doesn’t mean we need to take shit from people. I know that last statement doesn’t sound very spiritual, but I’m not claiming to be a saint here. I simply try to believe that something created life and the universe for a reason, and practice these things in an effort to grow.

This may be a simple definition of spirituality, but I believe it’s one that anybody can practice, no matter what their beliefs are.